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Tag Archives: wuthering heights

First of all, we have been woefully, woefully negligent in maintaining this blog recently. Blame it on the holidays, blame it on the lack of internet at Katherine’s house for a week, blame it on…laziness? No, don’t blame it on that. Whatever the cause (and it’s mostly the holidays), we have been away for a while and will probably only post infrequently from now until the New Year. Now with that out of the way…

I was recently perusing the New York Times’s Book section and found a review of Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel. Check out the review here. The book is described as being a modern, Japanese interpretation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. You may know that Heather and I have strong and contradictory feelings about Wuthering Heights, but despite my general distaste for Bronte’s novel, I am intrigued by the premise of Mizumura’s. Her story takes place in post-war Japan, which is a time and place I know little about. After my recent trip to that fascinating country, I have a new interest in all things Japanese. The review says that Mizumura takes an iconically Western story and manages to adapt it in a way that is entirely Japanese. Sounds fascinating! Has anyone read this?

I was struck by the anecdote about W. B. Yeats that Heather told in her post about the muse in Victorian art. The romance of the story is captivating until the story reaches its denouement, concluding with a disappointing roll in the hay that leads to the deterioration of the relationship. In case you missed it…

Yeats “spent more than 20 years of his life obsessed with an Irish feminist and nationalist named Maud Gonne. Many of his poems reference her, including “This, This Rude Knocking” and he wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen Ní Houlihan for her. In his eyes, she has been Helen of Troy, Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Leda, Deirdre, and many others…He pursued her relentlessly, proposing to her four different times between 1891 and 1901. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t enough of a nationalist to please her and refused to convert to Catholicism. Much to Yeats’ horror, she ended up marrying an Irish Republican by the name of John MacBride; being a reasonable man, Yeats then proceeded to persecute MacBride both in his letters and his verse. Long story short, that marriage ended in disaster and Yeats and Gonne came to consummate their relationship at last. Unfortunately, their relationship never developed further than that one night and Yeats was left again with his frustration and despair. In in his poem “A Man Young and Old”, he describes his night with her thusly:

My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck. ”

About their night together, he later remarked, “The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.” So even a night of passion with the object of his 20 year obsession could not give him the true communion of souls that he was seeking and likely expected. What a let down.

Today, we view the sexual consummation of a relationship as the ultimate expression of love and romance. Why else would we write modern fan-fiction and sequels to the great 19th century romances just so we can see the characters finally get it on? We feel like romance is not complete without the lovebirds hopping into the sack together. After that, who cares? Maybe the relationship will actually be a disaster, maybe the characters are a terrible fit for one another – we don’t want to see that. In fact, we don’t even care if they marry anymore. We want one passionate night, and then we tune out. Because of this heady anticipation of the conjugal act between characters, we place a great deal of emphasis on the importance of said act to the relationship. We have pretty high expectations for how magical and soul-connecting this encounter will be for the characters, and in Hollywood movies, the encounter is usually everything we want it to be. But in real life, we all know that our expectations are unrealistic, and expecting sex to provide that life-changing soul-connection with another person can lead to the sort of disillusionment that Yeats experienced.

Victorian authors did not seem to consider the physical consummation of a relation as its romantic peak. Certainly propriety prevented many authors from overtly discussing sexuality in their works, but in many great romances, we barely see the lovers married before the back cover slams closed on the lives of the protagonists like the door to their honeymoon suite [e.g. All the Austen novels]. It is the marriage plot, not the marriage-night plot, that so captivated 19th and early 20th century writers and readers. Victorians were not looking for the union of bodies but the communion of souls.

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is one great soul-mate romance of the period, but the characters in the novel who truly love each other, Catherine/Heathcliff, Young Catherine/Hareton, and maybe even Young Katherine/Young Linton never have sex in the recorded story. All the sexual pairings in the novel, Catherine/Edgar Linton and Heathcliff/Isabella Linton are characterized by one-sided love, violence, and sadism. Clearly, sexuality is not the height of love to these characters – the eternal soul-connection of Catherine and Heathcliff doesn’t require sex for validation or completion.

Jane Eyre also focused primarily on the soul-connection of its lead characters over the physical connection. Jane is disdainful of St. John’s willingness to make love to her without actually loving her. Jane asks herself,

Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous.

It doesn’t matter that he’s incredibly handsome, which she does point out to the reader multiple times – sex with anyone other than a soul mate, even within a marriage, is “monstrous.”

If Victorian authors won’t give us sex, they can at least give us a kiss, right? The family-friendly version of sex – the moment we will wait a whole movie or book for – even this physical act is rather inconsequential beside the emotional declarations of love that happen before and after it. In Jane Eyre, Jane and Rochester’s first kiss is down-played to the point where you could blink and miss it.

[Stop talking, Jane! For goodness’s sake, let me enjoy this moment! This is all I’m going to get until your happy little epilogue that skips all the good stuff!] Even this relatively chaste physical expression of passion takes backseat to all the pages and pages of TALK about love and soul connection.

Popular authors did not begin writing explicitly about sex until the early 20th century, but even then the act took a back seat to the cerebral connection or even lead to the dissolution or degradation of the cerebral relationship. In Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (written in 1920 but set in the 1870’s), the engaged, then married Newland Archer spends a few years enraptured by the divorced Countess Olenska. While surrounded by hypocritical friends and acquaintances who engage regularly in extra-marital affairs while publically decrying the practice, Archer and Countess Olenska see themselves as above such behavior. And yet, their passion continues to draw them together until finally, towards the end of the book as the Countess is preparing to leave England permanently, the pair agree to meet for one night to consummate their love and then be parted forever. As soon as the agreement is made, however, the nature of their relationship changes permanently. Their love is no longer pure in either of their eyes – they have become the base adulterers they disdain. Despite the fact that they never even make it to the bedroom [darn it, Wharton! It’s the 20th century! You could have given me something!], their relationship ends, and they never meet again. In this case, not only is sex not required for the pure soul-connection, sex actually kills it.

The Victorians were searching for a soul-mate, not a friend with benefits. Sex was not the end game of romance the way it often is today. In fact, sex without love (regardless of marital status) lead to degradation of character, loss of relationship, and other negative outcomes. Perhaps we should stop thinking of Victorians as “prudish” but rather as lovers with different, and maybe even more sensible, priorities than ours.

Just the other day, Katherine and I got into a discussion about writing and procrastination and to whom we would dedicate our works of dubious art. Naturally, this led us back to a) Benedict Cumberbatch and b) musing upon specific dedications in our favorite Victorian novels. We’ve included many transcribed dedications below from our own book collection, added a few that should have been, and, of course, came up with a few of our own.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

To my dear friend, Hommy-Beg

(According to this comment here, “The dedication is to Stoker’s friend Thomas Henry Hall Caine, the popular novelist. Of Manx parentage, and author of the Manxman, Caine was known to intimates by the Manx diminutive ‘Hommy-Beg,’ meaning ‘little Tommy.’ “)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

To William Godwin, author of Political Justice, Caleb Williams, etc, these volumes are repectfully inscribed by the Author.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

My Dear Robinson: It was your account of a west country legend which first suggested the idea of this little tale to my mind. For this, and for the help which you gave me in its evolution, all thanks. Yours most truly, A. Conan Doyle

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (a MUST read; we will review and discuss this in a future post)

To Bryan Waller Procter; From one of his younger brethren in Literature, who sincerely values his friendship, and who gratefully remembers many happy hours spent in his house.

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Dedicated to the Right Hon. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P., D.C.L., &c., &c., in grateful acknowledgement of literary advice most generously given to the Author.

(This one is particularly excellent, in my personal opinion. Bulwer-Lytton is known for many amazing things, including being the author of The Last Days of Pompeii, and was responsible for the phrases “the pen is mightier than the sword” and the infamous opening lines “it was a dark and stormy night”. There is a magnificent Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest held in his name every year, described as “a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels”. It is truly one of the best things around; pouring through entries of years past is a magnificent time-suck. NB: the inscription I have does not include a hyphenated last name, though every other source seems to indicate that his name, properly spelled, is hyphenated.)

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

To Julia Neilson and Fred Terry, whose genuis created the roles of Sir Percy and Lady Blakeney on the stage, this book is affectionately dedicated.

(Here’s the sweetest part: [Excerpted] “Accept the dedication of this book, my dear Sir, as a mark of my warmest regard and esteem – as a memorial of the most gratifying friendship I have ever contracted, and of some of the pleasantest hours I have ever spent – as a token of my fervent admiration of every fine quality of your head and heart – as an assurance of the truth and sincerity with which I shall ever be, My dear Sir, Most faithfully and sincerely yours, Charles Dickens”

From VictorianWeb: “A mark of the strength of their early friendship was Dickens’s dedicating the September 1837 volume edition of The Pickwick Papers. Some seventeen years older than Dickens, Talfourd was a friend of the great literary lights of the Romantic era: actor-manager William Macready, poets Coleridge and Wordsworth, and the essayist Lamb. By the autumn of 1836 Talfourd was moving in a younger circle of artists and writers, including the painters Maclise and Stanfield, critics Jerdan and Forster, Dickens, and that Romantic hold-over, the editor Leigh Hunt.”)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

To Marie-Antoine-Jules Senard Member of the Paris Bar, Ex-President of the National Assembly, and Former Minister of the Interior

Dear and Illustrious Friend, Permit me to inscribe your name at the head of this book, and above its dedication; for it is to you, before all, that I owe its publication. Reading over your magnificent defence, my work has acquired for myself, as it were, an unexpected authority.

Accept, then, here, the homage of my gratitude, which, how great soever it is, will never attain the height of your eloquence and your devotion.

Gustave Flaubert, Paris, 12 April 1857

Dedications that Should Have Been:

Oscar Wilde: To Bosie: for being an obnoxious little snot who, though handsome, didn’t deserve my awesomeness, didn’t treat me well, and ultimately wasn’t worth my time (or the time I wasted away in prison). Tell your persecuting and prosecuting father the Marquess to shove off. No Love, Me.

Maybe things could have turned out differently between me and Heathcliff if I hadn’t just fallen in love with Rochester. I went into Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights having just finished her sister’s wonderful, beautiful Jane Eyre. I loved Jane Eyre. That book has got everything – a badass feminist for a lead character, a charming male love interest, suspense, plot twists, and a beautiful romance. I was hoping Wuthering Heights would be similar, and I was disappointed. For some reason, Wuthering Heights seems to be commonly viewed as a great romance and Heathcliff as some dreamy protagonist; I disagree strongly with both of these characterizations. The two main characters of this book are terrible people, and I didn’t for one minute believe in their “love.” Sure, they have an attachment as children, and I can understand Heathcliff’s affection for Catherine as the only one who ever really showed him kindness (though the dad was pretty nice to him, too), but once they grow up it gets way too twisted for me. Catherine is selfish and cruel, and I don’t believe that she really loved Heathcliff. Yes, she says that stuff about him being more her than she is, but dem’s just words, honey – her actions say something completely different. She torments Heathcliff with Linton, and then she chooses Linton over Heathcliff for no compelling reason. She says that it would be beneath her to marry Heathcliff when in fact her father had always treated Heathcliff like a son and therefore an equal. Sure, Hindley treats him like crap, but everyone knows Hindley is a jerk. There seemed to be no real barrier between Catherine and Heathcliff besides her puffed-up sense of her own status. After Catherine ditches him, Heathcliff hulks out basically for the rest of his life and enacts his truly sadistic revenge on everyone in his path. But his revenge is not even really revenge because most of the people he abuses are completely innocent. Young Cathy, Hindley’s son, Isabella Linton, even Edgar Linton – these people had nothing to do with Catherine treating him like crap, and yet he views destroying their lives as some sort of appropriate retribution. It just seems so pointless. There is nothing compelling or sympathetic about these characters at all. I don’t argue that the book is not beautifully written or innovative for the time or a venerable literary work – I can concede all of these things. I just don’t like reading books about twisted sadists who hate each other and the world.

Heather: Why I Love Wuthering Heights

It’s hard to justify my love for this book when, as Katherine so aptly put it, the main protagonists are a pair of horrible people doing horrible things to each other horribly in a horrible setting. Horrible?

Strangely, though, it’s been one of my favorite books since high school and was a major gateway drug into Victorian poetry and literature. I suppose I do love it, in part, for the excess. It’s an excess of passion and emotion in an environment that’s as full of unbridled rage as the characters. Howling winds over the lonely moors; a howling Heathcliff beating his head against a tree until he gets CTE. Rather than the classic tropes of softness and kindness and giving and compromising that you find in most romantic narratives, here there is no compromise. There is no giving and no love as a healthy, normal person would understand it. To steal from the title of one of the more famous books on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, this is “furious love”, angry, intense, needy, and uncompromising. When these lovers swear to be together forever, it’s not in any idyllic lover’s heaven; they condemn themselves to waking torment until they are together once more: “Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” Or this from Cathy: “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger….My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.””

Yes, one could call such stuff ridiculous and melodramatic but it’s love as we rarely see it; all consuming, “ungovernable passion”, where the lovers are seemingly literal halves of one (cruel) whole and the narrative itself illustrates the mutual annihilation of both parties and their universe when fate or selfishness divides them. Also, I love Emily Bronte a little bit more, knowing that this howling, raging thing came from her psyche. It’s not at all what you’d expect from the mind of a woman growing up in such times, but her imagination was so vivid, her passions so great, and her mind so keen that to me, it speaks so much to the power of her own personality, to have constructed a work such as this.